Ancestry Academy  > Education  >  Discover Where Your Ancestors Lived

 

In this virtual event, Ancestry's Corporate Genealogist Crista Cowan guides family historians through the process of tracing family properties and discovering exactly where their ancestors lived. Emphasizing that "place is a character in your family stories," Crista explains that understanding the geography, communities, and physical locations where ancestors worked and worshiped provides vital context to who they were. The primary objective of the session is to equip researchers with the tools needed to "nail their ancestors' feet to a piece of dirt," moving beyond broad county or city levels to locate specific house addresses and family farms.

 

This event follows a practical, step-by-step methodology, beginning with the US Federal Census as a foundational tool for locating street names, house numbers, and home ownership data. Crista shares a personal case study of tracing her great-grandparents' Los Angeles home and highly recommends using Ancestry's private Notes feature to transcribe and organize this location data into a timeline. The session then explores how to fill the chronological gaps between censuses using City Directories found in the Card Catalog, and introduces the new "US home ownership records from 1920 to 1970" database. The presentation concludes with a deep dive into indexed county land ownership maps to locate rural renting ancestors, along with a sneak peek at Ancestry's new AI-powered Full Text Search feature.

 

Chapters:

 

• [0:00] Introduction: Place as a Character
  
  

• [04:33] Using the Census for Addresses
  
  

• [14:33] Transcribing with Ancestry Notes
  
  

• [28:04] Filling Gaps with City Directories
  
  

• [49:18] How Ownership and Land Maps
  
  

• [55:54] Full Text Search
  

 

Use the Ancestry Card Catalog today to search for city directories or county land ownership maps, and start tracking your ancestors' specific addresses in your private Ancestry tree notes.